New Year, Same Old LNC

Welcome to 2025, y'all! Ariel and Jonathan talk about what they got up to during the holidays, the movies and shows they've been watching, how excited they are for the new Superman movie, and much more! 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Large Nurdron Collider Podcast, the
podcast that's all about the geeky things happening in the
world around us and how very excited we are about them.
And Happy twenty twenty five. I'm Ariel Caston, and with me,
as always is the super crazy, awesome Jonathan Strickland. Happy
New Year, Happy New Year.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, I don't have a question for you, like I
forgot to put one together for you this time. I've already.
It's because it's been so long since we recorded, like
all the holidays hit and we were on hiatus because
we were all traveling and seeing family or hiding from family,
whatever it may be. So I just totally I dropped

(00:56):
the ball.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Oh that's a that's okay, it's thematic for the New Year.
Dropping balls, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh yeah, balls like crazy Areel. I've been dropping balls
left and right. But that's because I'm a juggler, you know.
I don't want you all to think Also, I like
tea bagging people and halo.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Oh no, that's horrible. That should be your New Yares's
resolution to not do that.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I thought my New's resolution is clearly to get an
explicit tag on this podcast, We're still I'm still dancing
around it. I'm not nearly as explicit as even the
most mildly explicit show. How were your holidays, Ariel, We
haven't really like talked very much.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
We haven't. They were pretty good. Traveled to visit family,
and then we came home and we did our own
personal Christmas on New Year's Day, so Christmas Eve was
also New Year's Eve, so that was fun. Baked a
lot of cookies. I found out that a short film
that I'll be doing will be uh screening at the

(01:58):
Cobb International Festival Indie Night this year, so it's cool. Yeah,
so because I just thought it, like, I knew it
was screening, but I didn't know it was a part
of that series. So that's really cool. I probably will
still not like watching myself in it, but that is
no comment on the quality of this of the filmmaking,

(02:24):
just on my meritical opinion of myself.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's the same as if, like I mean, I'm sure
our listeners out there have all had the experience of
listening to themselves on a recording and thinking, oh I
don't want to hear this. It's the same sort of thing,
but magnified a billion times when it's on a giant
screen and you're also in a room full of people
you don't know watching it as well.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah yeah, So other than that, you know good, I'm
already like I'm I don't know if you do this
or if any of our listeners do this, but I like,
I have to be productive and I will overschedule myself,
so I'm trying to find a way to get all
the things done in a healthier manner without scheduling down
to the minute every day and having too much to do.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Still yeah yeah, because then like you'll feel crappy because
either you've exhausted yourself because you've worked every single second
of the day, or more likely, you weren't able to
get to everything because stuff sometimes takes longer than you
think it will, and then you feel like you haven't
accomplished anything because something on your list didn't get checked off.

(03:26):
At least that's how it is for me. Like, I'm also, however,
the type of person who, when I think we've talked
about this before, when I make a checklist, the first
thing I put on there is make a checklist, so
I immediately have something I can check off.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's pretty awesome. That is pretty awesome. How are your holidays?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
They were all right. You know. We had some time
with my family this year and that was nice. We
got to meet sort of from a distance. My parents
have a new doggie. But the doggie clearly came from
a really abusive situation and was actually scheduled to be euthanized,

(04:06):
and my parents adopted her like hours before she was
to be euthanized. And she she's a pity mix, but
she's so timid, and she doesn't want to come near anyone,
and you know, you don't want to make eye contact
because it'll intimidate her. So it's gonna take some time
for her to come out of her shell. But she
looks like a very sweet dog. It's just gonna take

(04:28):
a lot of patience to get her to a point
where she's comfortable. So I hope that she's able to
reach that point without it taking too long, because she
looks she looks like she really deserves like the good life.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
So I would say she's got a couple of really
wonderful people looking after her, so I'm sure it won't.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Take too that's true. Mom and Dad are the best
and we ended up almost all the gifts we gave
my parents were actually for the dogs. They gave him,
like a huge fluffy dog bed for their new dog.
Her name is Gracie. She's very cute.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
So your parents, Sorry, I keep derailing you, but do
your parents have that thing where they're like, we have
enough stuff, we don't want more stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Because I think everyone in my family has reached that point.
I think everybody like and yet we every year we
end up getting stuff, Like even the people who have
are in the exact same situation continue to give us stuff.
But part of that, my mom explained was that she
turned to retail therapy to kind of deal with anxiety

(05:30):
issues toward the end of the year for reasons I
won't go into, but I'm sure you can imagine. So anyway, Yeah,
so we ended up with lots of little things. Did
you get anything particularly geeky as a president this year?
I don't mean to put you on the spot. I
should have asked you this beforehand.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
It's totally fine. I got a Lego reef for my birthday,
which is right before Christmas, so it counts. And I
got an airbrush kit for baking. That's kay. It's art.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's really cool though, Like I have
yet to have any of your baked goods. One of
these days I've got to fix that.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Because do you like peanut butter cookies?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
I love peanut butter. They're actually my favorite kind of cookie.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Because I made peanut butter cookies with like a peanut
butter ganash and then a homemade strawberry jam in them.
Ye rush, So it's like they they taste like a
peeb and J Like when they were still warm, it
just tasted like a gooey cookie sandwich. But uh yeah, everybody,
I gave them too, And this is this is not

(06:43):
It sounds like a brag, but it's really not because
I was actually a little sad. They're like, you could
you could have just not made the rest of your cookies,
and I'm like, thanks, well, you know, lesson learned, I guess,
but I will make you at some point and get them.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
I would love that. Like, yeah, if you're ever like thinking,
like what kind of cookies to Chaathan, Like I so
basic sugar cookies. I still like. I like chocolate chip cookies.
I love peanut butter cookies. Anything that's like key lime
or whatever. I dig those two, but just don't don't
ever present me an oatmeal cookie, because I will figure

(07:18):
that's just your message of saying I don't want to
be around you anymore.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh that's sad. I love like a soft oatmeal raisin,
not so much as a dessert more as like a breakfast.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
I just find I find oatmeal raisin deeply and personally
offensive because it could have been a chocolate chip.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
But my friend brought over yesterday like these spiced, crispy
oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips in them, and they were delicious.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
I will say that this was the first year I
remember actually liking gingerbread cookies. Like, for the longest time,
gingerbread was right up there with oatmeal cookies and that
I couldn't be bothered with them. But I kind of
developed taste for them this year, so that was fun.
Part of it was that my parents had some really
incredible gingerbread cookies that actually had some icing or frosting

(08:11):
on the top of them, and those were really good.
So yeah, and they were still kind of soft, like
they weren't those super hard, brittle gingerbread cookies, which are
also okay. But because they had a good chew to them.
I really liked them a lot.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Nice. Nice. I found out I don't like molasses because yeah,
I put it in my gingerbread and it tasted so bitter.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I imagine molasses is a tricky thing to
work with without it getting too bitter because it's got
such a like that burnt sugar taste to it, almost
kind of like a like kind of like if you
make a caramel, but you burn the caramel while you're
making it and then it went.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Bad and it fell into some like kerosene.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
I got involved with the wrong crowds, started smoking behind.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
The schoolather jacket. Yeah, you know the kind, the kind Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, Well, I think for me, the geekiest thing I
got was actually a gift given to me by Shaye
Lee's partner. Friend of the show, Shay Lee, her partner,
gave me a Bluetooth beanie. Oh cool. So it's a
beanie like a stocking cap that you wear on your head,

(09:23):
and it's got headphone speakers built into either side of it,
so you can connect it to your phone and use
it to listen to podcasts and stuff without having earbuds
or headphones on and just have it on the Beanie,
and considering that about every third day it's cold here. Yeah,
the weather has been somewhat somewhat malleable over the last

(09:44):
couple of weeks. We had like a day the other
day was almost seventy degree, actually was over seventy and
now it's like in the fifties right now, but it.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Was, yeah, and then it's going to get into the
thirties for a few days.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah. So having the Beanie as an option is good,
and it means that I can still listen to two shows.
So that's what I've been doing. But yeah, so let's
let's talk about some of the stuff we've watched this
last time we recorded, and I'm sure there's more than
what I have on here, but I just put in
the stuff I could remember. And so one of the

(10:20):
things I watched was Nosfarato, which.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Came out and.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
There's more than Yes nosfora too. I also nosfa I
saw it on a couple of days after Christmas, but
I saw it at home because I had a screener
for it. Not a brag, but being part of the
Writer's Guild of America means occasionally get screeners. Yeah, so
I watched it at home. I made me wish I

(10:46):
had gone to the theater to see it, because it
is very much a theatrical experience. I can't say, I
guess I was entertained by it. It's one of those
where I'm like, I didn't find it that I found
things about it really distracting. So a lot of the
acting choices, like the physical acting in particular, were incredibly

(11:10):
theatrical and in a way that in a way that
didn't say cinematic to me, it said more theater. So
it stood out and it distracted me. But then I thought, well,
that could be an homage to the silent film original Nosferatu,
Like they were kind of doing a throwback to what

(11:31):
you would see in the old silent film era when
you didn't have sound to enhance the film experience and
everything was much more melodramatic. So maybe that was it.
But it was combined with a lot of modern filmmaking
techniques and effects, and so it just was hard for

(11:52):
me to make those cohere in my brain. I know
a lot of people loved it. I just found like
I found like it was too flavors that never quite
mixed for me.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Interesting, Like I heard mixed reviews. I heard that it's
very cinematically beautiful, but that it was a little too long.
I didn't hear about the very theatrical acting, but I
did watch a short like social media interview with Nicholas
Holt where he said that Chris Eggers is the director
Robert Eggers. Robert Eggers told him not to move his

(12:26):
eyebrows so much, which is a habit to do.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Don't be like Denarest Targerian. Yeah, I would recommend it
if you're of the right age, because it's definitely an
adult movie. I would recommend it for horror fans or
fans like Actually, the film I would compare it to
for more reasons than one is Bram Stoker's Dracula, the

(12:55):
Francis Ford Coppola movie. Because Francis Ford Coppola, he incorporated
so many class film effects, like in camera film effects
in this movie. I found those really distracting. When I
watched that the first time, I was like, I get
that you like all these tricks, but you're putting them
so close together, like they're happening in such such proximity

(13:16):
that I couldn't concentrate on the actual content of the movie.
I felt similar to that with Nosferatu, but that may
just be my own and no one else in the
world may feel the same way, and that's totally fine.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
I also, wait, sorry, I have one more question.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Would it be too much for me?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
I like Dracula, but there'll be parts where you would
want to look away. There'll be parts I will say
it's not Shae rated.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Shay.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Shay won't watch anything in which there's a child endangerment
or death, and that definitely is a thing insta.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
I know there's I know there's some animal grossness and
I don't like.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
That, but there's a little bit of animal grossness. Yeah,
I mean there's one segment that's like just an obvious, Oh,
his arms have gone down so they can swap out
the live animal he was holding with a fake version
of the animal so that he can do something terrible
to it when he raises his arms back. But it's
clearly fake. Like I was like, it's so like it's

(14:20):
I wasn't even thinking about the movie at that point.
I was thinking about the filmmaking at that point, so
it was kind of crazy. I also finished What We
Do in the Shadows. I watched the last season of
that really enjoyed. It felt that the last episode was
very fan servicing, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I actually really liked the ending, even though I recognized

(14:42):
as being total fan service. And I've just started watching
Squid Game two. I'm into episode four, and I got say,
I think it's more tense than the first season.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
I think they were going to give it a happier ending.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oooh boy. Okay, So there's arguably little tiny bits of
humor in maybe the first three episodes, but not much.
It's pretty grim and dark, and then out of nowhere
an episode four, there's kind of a zany, wacky moment
that like complete with wacky music in the background, And

(15:20):
as I was watching it unfold, I was thinking, this
doesn't fit like you've been You've been hummeling me for
three episodes with how dark this world is, and then
like to have this little comedy bit, complete with comedy
music in the background, just feels totally out of place.
But I don't know, again, maybe that's just me.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I only watched like the first few episodes of the
first season because, like you said, it's really bleak. But
I did see that the main character comes back to
the second season because of trailers. So my assumption is
if it's not getting happier each season, that the main
character is becoming dexter, because if you keep going back

(16:02):
to this game where you know everybody else is gonna die,
then you're basically becoming a serial killer.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Essentially, this isn't really a spoiler. Essentially, his decision is
merited in he wants to actually find who is who
is perpetuating these games and to stop that person and
to try and hopefully stop people from getting killed, like

(16:29):
to try and convince people, hey, you're being manipulated. This
is all being done for their entertainment. This is not
being done for your welfare, Like that's not a part
of it at all. That your suffering is their entertainment
and your participation in this enables them to do it,
and that it makes way more sense to walk away

(16:52):
than to play the games. But of course, when you
have all these people who are in desperate situations and
they're being promised a chance to pay off the debts
that they owe, it's hard for them to just walk away.
So I think it kind of becomes like it reminds
me a little bit of the Matrix film, specifically the

(17:13):
second Matrix film, where it becomes like it's a philosophical
argument being had by by two different points of view.
So you've got the winner of the first season where
he's essentially saying this is wrong. People are better than
what you give them credit for. They're not trash or animals.
You can't just dismiss them, you know. The other side

(17:34):
it's like, hey, they made a choice. They chose to
be here. We didn't force them to be here. We
just gave them a choice. And the guy's like, no,
you're not really giving them a choice. You're promising them
something that they that you know, more than ninety nine
percent of them cannot achieve by the way the games
are constructed. So it's kind of like that, and I

(17:56):
think I think it's also going to be based on
what I've seen, it will play out where one of
the guys who's running the games is purposefully trying to
break that character and to make him admit that you know,
he's wrong, and that that the games are totally fine
because they're just giving people a choice. And that's the

(18:18):
impression I get. We'll see if that's how it plays
out as it continues on. I will say like I've
enjoyed it other than like it does highlight major differences
in performance styles between like South Korea and the Western world.
But the first season did that too.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah. Yeah, especially if you, because we watched it not
with subtitles but with vo dubbing dubbing, So especially then
because even even in the voice acting that goes over it,
it tends to have a bit more of a melodramatic
tinge to it.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
That's one about you.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
I did not watched Good Games. I actually almost did.
I watched the final season of what If, and it
is my favorite season of what If. I loved it
pretty much from beginning to end. I thought that all
of the episodes were super strong. They just had it

(19:23):
feels like they just had fun with it, which I love.
And I want you to catch up on what If
so you can watch season three because there is you know,
it's an anthology series, but there is also a through
line because it's following that main watcher guy. And I
know you like what If, so I think you would

(19:44):
really love the ending of it.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah. I definitely need to catch it because it was
one of those things where I was like, I enjoyed
the first season, and I agree, Like even in the
first season you started to see a tiny bit of
a narrative through line. Yeah, but yeah, I I just
gotta get I just got to get to it.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
They're like like every episode you're gonna be like, oh
I love this, because I was like, oh I love this,
Jonathan would love this.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
I promise I'll have this one scooch ahead of New
Girl for a while.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Okay, that's fine. If you've you've given it a chance,
and if you don't like it, you could drop it.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah I haven't. I haven't watched very many episodes of
a New Girl, maybe like seven or eight.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
So yeah, it's not like Lost where you have to
get to ten.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Starts getting good.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, like when the others show up. I've scarred a
few friends that way. No, Like, the relationships definitely do
develop and get better over time, and the characters become
likable and there's inside jokes and it becomes very wonderful,
but you know, there is that growing pain at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
I've watched half of Secret Level and another anthology series,
This one's on Amazon Prime. We talked about it a
little bit where it's original stories within the Cannon in
the world of different video games.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Oh right, yeah, I remember now, well they have different
different kind of in some cases reimaginings of certain video
game characters.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, so all the stories take place within those
video game worlds, but there are original stories. The first
couple were great. So there was a Dungeons and Dragons
the Queen's Cradle, which is not a game I've heard of,
but it was a lovely story. There was Seafu after that,
which was delightful. There was Lost Worlds, which I wasn't

(21:40):
familiar with, and it was a great story, but it
suffered a little bit from The main character was voiced
by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and while I don't really have a
problem with the guy, he's not the best voice actor
got like, so the voice in the face didn't always
quite match up for me. And albeit I'm sure people
like you and I might be a little bit more
critical about stuff like that, Ben everyone. And then it

(22:02):
was a whole bunch of fighting games. Unreal Tournament was
actually brilliant. I've never played it, but it was a
really good, like really good Robot Ai kind of as
Mavian type story, but like crossfire, and there were a
cup and the war hammer, and there was one other

(22:24):
one that I'm like, these are just all fighty fighty
armored Corps armored cores. Was okay, pac Man darkest of
all the episodes so.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Far, well, I mean they're ghosts, has to be.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, it's it's a very like, very reimagining of pac Man.
Uh spoiler? Do you want me to tell you, Jonathan.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
No, I'm gonna watch this. I'm gonna I am okay,
I am so intrigued by the dark pac Man.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
It is the darkest gooriout episode of the entire first season.
They've already had a second season planned. I saw it
on IMDb, and shortly after that pac Man episode came out,
they announced a new pac Man game. So if you
don't want a spoiler, don't look at that new pac
Man game. Okay, but overall fun, The episodes are really short.
They're between like seven and seventeen minutes each, maybe a

(23:16):
couple dum dip into the twenties, but it's really kind
of a way for them to a proof of concept
stories within these universes for bigger projects. I'm fine with that.
It's a good way if we're like, ah, we've got
like twenty minutes until we have to go. You want
to watch something short because we don't want to start
anything else. It's great for that. I watched all of

(23:37):
the rest of the time quangles on dropout, which are
where the Dimension twenty main cast on tour would roll
a bingo cage and get a random character that they've played,
and they'd insert it into a random setting that they've
played in, and that would be the story. They get
better as they go.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Along, so you would end up having like characters who
never would interact with another under normal circumstances because they
exist in different worlds and different campaigns. Now they're being
kind of paired together by the players who have played
those in those various campaigns.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, and sometimes even different slightly different because they adjust
the rules systems for the different settings and games and
things like that. So like Starstruck Odyssey had a very
different rule setting than let's say, Fantasy High, which was
you know, Roll twenty. So it's a lot of fun.
They were able to make all of the rules work

(24:32):
together seamlessly. The first episode. I could tell why it
was the first episode because it wasn't that great but
the rest were a lot of fun. And then we
watched one of Tony's friends, longtime school friends we met
up with while we were a visiting family, and they
recommended Jury Duty to us, which is a show that
came out last year and it's pitched as a documentary

(24:53):
about jury duty, and everybody in it is an actor
except for one guy who doesn't know that the trial
is not real and everybody is an actor.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, and he's one of the jurors, right.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, he's one of the jurors. He's never done anything
in in entertainment, quite literally. I looked into it and like,
I really liked it because they did not make him
the butt of the joke. All of the other characters
are the butt of the joke. And they also really

(25:30):
kept his This is like a tiny bit of a
spoiler because they go into the how they did it
in the final episode and then some bonus episodes they
release released. But they really put his mental health and
well being as a priority while making the show, so
if they did something that seemed to really upset him,
they had backup plans of like, well, this character did

(25:52):
this kind of crappy thing and it looks like it
actually really affected him, So now we'll do this to
make it better to cheer him up, because they wanted
to make sure that he wasn't the butt of the
joke and that he wasn't.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Being traumatized for entertainment purposes.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Being traumatized for entertainment persons and purposes. And it turned
out he was a really nice guy. Yeah, Like some
of it might have been because there were documentary cameras,
but there's a lot that he did that he didn't
need to do that was just kind and upstanding and
he was really smart and apparently a little bit ahead
of the writers a couple of times.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
They talked about in the final episode how he was
like a court was canceled today because of a COVID
scare and it was because they had to rewrite some
stuff because he got ahead of the ahead of the
plot and they needed to rehearse it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
I mean that's always That's always fascinated to me from
a creative standpoint, Like on the other side of it,
where whenever you're trying to make something that's a structure
for people to play within, where it's not, you know,
not everyone is scripted, right like in this case, he's
not scripted. Everybody else might have some general rules they're

(27:08):
following or whatever, like an outline and kind of guide rails,
but he doesn't, and so you can only plan for
so much. And it's kind of like if you are
a game master of a role playing game and you
know the people playing characters are invariably going to come
up with something you did not anticipate, and sometimes that

(27:30):
happens every single play session. Sometimes it only happens maybe
once or twice, but it always it can have a
significant impact to the game, at least if you're a
really good game master and you roll with it and
you don't force them to not do it right, like, no,
you can't do that. I'm not gonna let you because
it ruins my story.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
So there, it was definitely that, and there was definitely
a lot of improv However, a lot of it was scripted.
There were a lot of like scripted moments of this
needs to happen, and because a lot of it was
happening between other characters, they could and then you know,
obviously the James Mars didn't place himself and he plays

(28:12):
kind of a heel. He plays like a Dwight character,
and he is the excuse for them to all have
to get sequestered for this really dumb trial because normally
this kind of trial wouldn't get sequestered because.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
But because they have a celebrity on the jury, they
have to.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, but well, because he's done some crap because he's
a celebrity and he doesn't want to serve on jury duty.
He's really like the Michael Scott Dwight of the entire situation. Okay,
but I would not like it's good they got someone
who wasn't an actor because watching it, I'm like, oh,
I know these actors. I know Kirk Fox and Ross
Kimball and Lisa Gilroy and Aaron Barnhol Alan Barron Holds

(28:50):
and like Susan Berger. A lot of these actors I've
seen in other things. Yeah, so, uh so it was
it was really interesting because I'm like, how does he
not recognize more of these people? But I guess because
they're that guy that was in that thing as opposed
to big name celebrities. But it was really good. I
really liked it. I found it by the end, I

(29:12):
found some of it like, really, how how can he
not guess by this? But it's such a weird situation.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, like why would you suspect it? I mean maybe
with the fact that James Marsden is part of it,
that might give you some pause into thinking that maybe
this is somewhat artificial. But other than that, it would
be really hard.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah. But like but to the extreme that everybody was
an actor. Yeah, you figure if they go somewhere, you'd
be it would just be the people in that place,
but no, they're all extras.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
So yeah, which how wild, Like, and it's also wild
that it turned out well, right, because there's no guarantee
that what you're going to end up with is going
to be entertaining or usable. So that's like lightning in
a bottle right there.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
It really was. And it's a short watch. The episodes
are like thirty minutes a pop, maybe a little under,
and it's a it's a short series. And I've had
people compare it to like Joe Ordinary or Joshimo or
whatever that reality show was. Yeah, but Joe Shmo, the
the person who's not in on the joke, starts off
as the butt of the joke and then they switch

(30:21):
it on later in switch yeah up later in.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
I think I think figuring out like, hey, maybe we
don't make the one person who's not in on this
to feel like they're the constant victim or target of
humor is the right way to go, because like, how
unfair is that? I mean, it's just you'd be like

(30:46):
it would be like, oh, thank you, I'm glad I
got Truman showed.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah. And then he did get paid more than the
twenty five dollars a day you get for jury duty.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Well that's that's good to hear, because otherwise, if he
had been paid just as much as it paid for
jury duty, that wol First of all, it would have
been funny but also upsetting.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, but you want it to be a good experience.
So obviously he was like, what the heck. But at
the same time, they're like, look, we brought you in
to do this, but what we didn't know was how
kind you were and how you treated these other peoples.
And they brought up examples and they're like, you're you're
kind of like an everyday hero, and we award you
as as a jury because you've been on trial too.

(31:26):
Essentially all of this money, so that's nice. It's not
like millions of dollars, but it's it's good, it's a
good amount of money.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Well, that's awesome. I'll have to maybe I'll check it
out like this sort that sort of thing. Uh, it's
really it could go one of two ways for me.
Either I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm vibing with this, or
I'm just like, oh, I'm feeling so much secondhand anxiety
for the person who is unknowingly in this situation. I'm
feeling so much empathy toward them, even though I know

(31:56):
it turns out well, and even though i know they're
not going to make him low bad, it's just that
that feeling. It's it's the same way I feel, honestly
at this point, Ariel, it's hard for me to go
see any live performances. It used to be like that
was a joy. I would have like if something went wrong,
people would roll with it, it would be fine. But now

(32:16):
I just want everything to go great for everybody so
they can feel really good about themselves. And the higher
risk the show, the harder it is for me to
sit through. So some more stuff like circ de solat
or a magic show or stand up comedy, I'm like
physically uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
I've been there. I'm not fully there, but I definitely
can relate. I'd say, give Jerry duty. You try definitely
do what I first.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Okay, that's good to know to do what a first.
I think after an hour, Yes, now we can move
on to talking very shortly about stuff for thirty seconds
or less. Yes, and I think I'm up first.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
You are all right?

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Here we go. One bit of news that broke while
we were on hiatus was that Jared Leto, having recovered
from killing a third tier Spider Man spinoff characters chances
of having any more cinematic outings, has now been signed
to play Skeletor in the live action Masters of the
Universe film. I'm curious to see if he turns himself
into a skeleton for this part. You know how method

(33:22):
actors are. Also, I will not be seeing this.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
I want to see it for everybody else though. Okay.
Creature Commandos, which is the cartoon suicide squad of the
DC universe, has been renewed for a second season. It's
people who I know who watch it said they like
it pretty well. It's nice because James Gunn says that

(33:49):
working on Superman is big and it's stressful, but every
time he gets to work on Creature Commandos. It's like Christmas.
He wrote the episodes and he gets to go in
and work on them. It's nice that it brings him
so much joy.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
I will point out, however, that Suicide Squad is also
the Suicide Squad of DC comics.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
All right, ah so fair.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
After years of hoping, Jason Momoa is getting his wish.
As if being a towering hunk of man meat isn't enough,
He'll also be playing the intercalactic bounty hunter Lobo in
the upcoming film Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow. Mamoa has long
wanted to play this character, and apparently his previous stint
as Aquaman didn't disqualify him from consideration in James Gunn's

(34:32):
new DC Cinematic universe.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
I feel like that's pretty greedy to take both big characters.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Take it up with Chris Evans, the Human Torch in
Captain America.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah Yeah, Tom Holland Crazy Neighborhood Spider Man is also
apparently a actual neighborhood superhero of sorts, because while visiting
the super Ma he broke up a fight. The people
were really angry at each other, and when he was like, hey,

(35:05):
calm down. They were kind of like, dude, Spider Man's
telling us to calm down. We should do that, and
it worked. He doesn't really go a lot of like
big public places because it does cause a scene. But
you know, if you're gonna if you're gonna use here,
with great power comes great responsibility.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, hey, you know what what a gent for actually
stepping in, Like he could have just he could have
just tried to ignore it and walk away, but no,
he stepped forward, and that's just kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Also, he's excited about Spider Man four, so that's.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Cool, as are we all. Well, once upon a time
there was a can't be horror film called Anaconda that
starred folks like j Lo ice Cube, John Boyd and
Owen Wilson. And it's bad, but in an entertaining way. Well,
we can't let franchises lie dormant for two longs. Now,
Anaconda is resurrected as a comedy with a reboot film

(35:59):
with Paul Rudd Jack Black attached to star in it.
Tom gormickan who held the unbearable weight of massive talent,
co wrote the script and has directed it. It's out
next Christmas. Twenty twenty five. By the way, Ariel told
me that we talked about this as a rumor back
in August, but to me, it's new all over again.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, but now there's like a little teaser video, so
it's all it makes sense. Speaking of things getting resurrected,
the Mummy is getting resurrected again, this time by Lee Cronin,
who directed Evil Dead Rides. He said it's gonna be
super scary and unlike any Mummy we've seen before. But
I say, unless it's the classic or we get Brendan Frasier,

(36:42):
I'm probably not interested because he's making it already sound
too scary.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Do you think at the end of the movie he's
gonna say that's a rap?

Speaker 1 (36:54):
I hope.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
So all right, it's the beginning of a new year,
which brings the question what works have now entered the
public domain? So that's when copyright expires and anyone can
make use of things that were formerly copyrighted. So stuff
created in nineteen twenty nine is now in the public domain.
That includes the classic Silly Symphony's cartoon The Skeleton Dance

(37:15):
out of Disney. That also includes William Faulkner's novel The
Sound and the Fury and Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms,
as well as the earliest versions of ten ten and
Popeye the Sailor Man. Thus we're getting that awful looking
Popeye horror movie.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
I'm sorry you were talking, and the awful looking pop
Eye movie is unfortunate. But the next story popped up
an image of Dwayne Johnson's head on a worm body
with tiny arms I'm guessing like a spice like the
Chosen Worm from June three. But it was very upsetting

(37:50):
and distracting, okay.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
And also has nothing to do with the story you're about.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
The cover, No, absolutely not. My stories about Christopher Nolan
and that his next film is The Odyssey, which could
be really cool. He's going to do it using Imax
film technology. It's a very long story, so I expect
much like Oppenheimer, which was Christopher Nolan's last really big hit,
this will also be very long. I would love if

(38:18):
he teamed up with the team that made Epic, which
is the musical about the Odyssey, because I would love
to see that put up on its feet.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
There is another Odyssey related film that's either out already
or is coming out soon, and I cannot remember the
name of it, but I do remember. It's specifically about
Odysseus's return home, and he comes back home to find
that all these these losers are trying to marry his

(38:50):
wife in order to get it on Odysseus's kingdom because
Odsseus is presumed dead. I want to say that someone
like Ray finds is in it, i'd have to. And
it's called The Return There we go. So yeah, I
know that I had seen a preview for that and
thought it looked pretty like it looked more grounded. It's not.

(39:13):
It's clearly not like a a mythical sort of take
on Odysseus. It's more of a grounded take. So he doesn't,
you know, as far as I can tell, there were
no like Cyclops or.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Of course it's grounded because he's not on a boat anymore.
He's at home.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, I mean that was kind of the whole point
of the Odyssey, right, like good old Homer.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Well, I'm curious, I hope, I said, Ray, it's Ralph?

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Is it are a? What's how's it spelled r A
L P H. It's it's pronounced Ray. Actually, technically it's
pronounced rafe so technically it's Rafe Finds. It's spelled its
spelled Ralph but pronounced Rafe, and yes, it makes no sense.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Like, yeah, I didn't anything about it when you said it,
because I'm like, yes, that's correct, And then I looked
at it and I guess there's just a disconnect between
every time I read it and every time I.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Hear it totally. Yeah. No, I mean like when when
I first saw his name, I just assumed his name
was pronounced Ralph Fines, but then after you know, seeing
him speak in interviews and stuff, it's Ray Finds. And
again it's because it's because the British are wacky. They
like they complain about how we Americans say things, but
look at how you spell stuff and then how you

(40:29):
say it. Yeah English, I mean.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
But also like American actors too, because like Shia Labuff
I always thought was shy La Buff or Shilah Buff.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
It never really comes across that shy to me.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
No, No, he's kind of problematic.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
But uh yeah, we'll we'll we'll leave Shia laff there
behind it. Shi the Beef is gonna be in our
rear view mirror. One thing we wanted to mention or
at least I wanted to mention is that we're recording
this on J. R. R. Tolkien's birthday, So happy birthday,
mister Tolkien. I am assuming you're still dead.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
That would be great.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Someone they were still dead agreed, there's a zombie Tolkien
walking around. We're all in trouble.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
I don't know why I said that. Look, I have
been here but not all there this week, got it.
One of our listeners shared a meme on our discord saying,
if you could have any like if writers wrote fanfic
for each other's books, who would you want to write
which book? So like, you know Terry Pratchett writing game
and stuff or whatever, And I said, I would like

(41:39):
either J. R. R. Tolkien to write the Chronicles of
Narnia series or vice versa. C. S.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Lewis to write I was thinking of the same thing
because they did know each other. Tolkien and Lewis knew
each other, but of course Lewis was far more like
his works are far more rooted in Christianity, and Tolkien's
works were more rooted in Old English and Germanic kind
of epic saga structures. So seeing how they would each

(42:10):
take the other's world would be interesting. I'm sure that
that that the C. S. Lewis version of a Tolkien
story would be much more Christian.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
And then I think I said something like Dune written
by Lemony Snickett or Sandman written by Lemony snick or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Just because I think for me it would be Dune
written by Douglas Adams. No, Douglas Adams, not, There's no,
there was never presently Douglas Adams. You had John Adams
and John Quincy Adams, you had a statesman named Frederick Douglas.
Douglas Adams was the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to

(42:53):
the Galaxy.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, that would be really good.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yeah, wow, ariel Wow.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay, so I also slept in my contacts and they're
hurting my eyes and I can't see.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah, and you're wearing glasses now, so I assume you
managed to get the contacts out. You're not like, you're
not like trying to go from twenty twenty vision to
forty forty. Yeah, that's a terrible hut.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Don't admit to it. And then I'm like, yeah, live
up to your your thievery. Ever, I don't know, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, well let's let's uh, let's get back on track,
shall we talk about some of the stuff. So we
have a lineup and we actually divided it into two
parts because we had some stuff that's a little older,
but we didn't get a chance to talk about it
because we were on hiatus during the holidays and we
still wanted to, you know, mention it. So one of
them was. It was not long after we did our

(43:50):
last episode we got the first teaser for the James
Gunn Superman film and it's it's a fairly short teaser,
but you do get to see a little bit of
like Nicholas Holt as Lex Luthor, a very quick shot
of Nathan Phillian as Guy Gardner, that kind of stuff,
as well as obviously we get Superman, Crypto, the super Dog,

(44:14):
and some other stuff too. So what did you think
of the teaser?

Speaker 1 (44:19):
I really liked it. I know a bunch of people
thought Crypto was a little goofy, but I didn't get
a goofy tone for the overall movie, and I'm it's
the best cgi Dog I've seen today, so.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
On for it. Yeah, I think I was one of
the people who told you that I thought that Crypto
looked kind of goofy as as the owner of a dog.
I felt that Crypto looked a little too cartoony for
my tastes.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
But also our mutual friend Jeremiah, who loves Superman, is
really upset by Nathan Fillian's bowl cut as Guy Gardner,
which is cannon. Yeah, and I just think make Kim
firms that nobody will like him.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Well, Guy Gardner's a jerk, like he's a Yeah, the
character is a real jerk face. Is that word? The
other words I would use are not they would get
us that explicit tag.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
You know. I was worried that there was gonna Yeah,
I was worried that there's going to be too many
characters in it. But if anybody can handle a lot
of characters, it's James Gunn And he's proven, has a proven.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Track record, So yeah, Guards of the Galaxy Suicide Squad,
he's got he's got the stuff down. Peacemaker. Yeah, so
I'm I'm curious to see more. I also really liked
the music that they have. They incorporate a little bit
of the John Williams theme into the New Superman theme,

(45:47):
And you know, while you could argue that you know,
leaning on something that's rooted in the late nineteen seventies
is kind of a crutch.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
I like.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
I like that there's that connective tissue for one thing.
John Williams score for Superman and is still one of
my favorite film scores of all time. I love the
main theme for Superman, and I love the Oh. I
can't remember what Lex Luthor's Little March is called, but
I love the remember but it's cute. I don't expect

(46:20):
to hear that that's too. It's far too cartoony to
make its way into a modern superhero film, but it
was nice to hear, so I was pleased that that
got incorporated me too.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
I here's the thing. I know a lot of people
were burned by the Snyder Verse and the previous attempts
at a DC connected universe. I once James Gunn started
talking about his opinions of Superman and how and his
plans for Superman and how Superman was going to be

(46:52):
a beacon of hope and light in a cynical world,
and how he took this project, the fact that it
has been so stressful for him because he's he's taking
taking it so seriously to make sure that he gives
Superman the right treatment has made me hopeful from it
for it from the get go. Yeah, Like I'm not

(47:12):
gonna lie Like it's not that James Gunn like can
do no wrong in my eyes, because I certainly don't
like all his stuff, But but just that that the
responsibility he's he I feel he has taken with this
character has has made me feel like it will be
a good movie, and I really hope it.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Holds up to that totally. Yeah, I feel the same way.
I think, Like you know, I was a little worried
because James Gunn I hadn't seen anything that I felt
was what I would call truly optimistic from James Gunn
And I feel like, ultimately a good Superman story, I mean,

(47:53):
unless you're trying to just break the mold or whatever,
but a good Superman story, in my mind, needs to
be optimistic. But but and it made me worry a
little bit about him being a little too quippy, you know,
a little too smart assy. But I don't get the
sense that that's going to be the case at all.
So I am very eager to see one what the

(48:15):
Fish film is and two how it's received.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yeah, also, Hawk girl, and that's awesome, even though yet
again another character I would love to play.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Next up, we have a trailer for a felm that
again came out while we were on hiatus, Death of
a Unicorn, which I thought was kind of a dark
comedy horror version of Harry and the Henderson's Yeah It.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I saw this trailer on YouTube and I clicked on
it solely because I was like, Paul Rudd and Jenna
Ortega in a car together, let me see what this
is about. It is so weird.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, I thought at first when I was clicking on
it that the title was just going to be, you know,
allegorical or metaphorical or something, but no, it's literally about
this this I guess father daughter. Is that Paul Rudd
is Jenna Ortega's dad? I think so. Well. Anyway, they're
in a car together and they hit a creature and

(49:21):
discover that they they've hit a unicorn, and they're on
their way to this giant family estate and the family
feels like they could have stepped out of like knives
out right. Like it's one of those very rich, disconnected,
spoiled brat type families that are like part of a

(49:43):
pharmaceutical company or have a pharmaceutical company under their name.
And then they determined that the horn of the unicorn,
this is just based on what I see in the trailer,
has medicinal properties that are perhaps on the miraculous side.
But then they find out that the unicorn's mate and
possibly the presumed deceased unicorn itself are out for revenge.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
So and they can like shape shift too, yeah, better
gain that revenge. And then it's got like this all
star cast, in my opinion, all star cast will Porter Poulter, Tayloni,
Anthony Kerrigan who I will watch in anything. He's also
in the New Superman and I'm super excited about it.

(50:32):
Richard D. Grant, Steve Steve Park, Jessica Hines, just like
this huge cast in this really goofy a. I guess
a twenty.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Four movie maybe. Yeah. I love Richard Y Grant, Like
I think Richard Y. Grant is great. He's one of
those actors who everything I see him in he choose
the scenery like it's not by his business like it's
he gets away with stuff that no other actor could
because again it's like bigger than what you would typically

(51:00):
associate with cinematic acting, but somehow he manages to do it.
Like I think of Richard Y Grant as the more
unhinged like Dark Universe twin to Hugh Grant.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Yes, yes, which reminds me I need to watch the
franchise because he's in that.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah. So looking forward to Death of a Unicorn, I
wasn't sure that I would And were you okay with
this area because I know that the animal endangerment and
stuff is one of your big ix but this is
also a fictional critter.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I like, I don't know. I want to be okay
with it because I think it's going to be a
zany ride, but you know, people delighting in the death
of an animal. Look, I'm not a vegetarian, but I
I also have a hard time if I step on
a bug and I don't kill it all the way

(51:55):
on the first try. So I'm a conflict inflicted person and.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
I don't know that's fair, that's fair? Maybe, maybe maybe
you'll have a better idea when we get closer to
when that movie comes out. Next up, we also got
while we were on hiatus at trailer for Karate Kid Legends,
where we get like Ralph Macchio and I'm sorry Rafe
Mantrio and Jackie Chan. That was a joke and Jackie

(52:22):
Chan and a movie together.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Got there eventually.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Yeah. But yeah, this this trailer looks good.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Yeah, it does. It is a little weird to me that, like, so,
Jackie Chan was in the Last Karate Kid with Jaden Smith,
which I also thought was just fine. But it's weird
for me for him knowing. I think, because my brain
stays met on this one, that Jackie Chan is is

(52:50):
such a an accomplished, at least film martial artist that
he is going to uh Daniel Russo for advice on
martial arts, but maybe he's going to him for advice
on handling kids. I think he looks good. I'm excited
to see this kid do a lot of like Jackie

(53:11):
Chan type stunts, which they show a little bit of
in the trailer. It's the same kid who is in
American born Chinese I think is the name of the Yeah,
American born Chinese. I thought he was really good in
that too.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, I thought the trailer looks good. I did think,
at least, as I recall, I did not full disclosure,
I did not rewatch this just before we went to
record so I haven't seen it, but as I recall,
I didn't pick up a lot of lighthearted or humorous
moments in the trailer. Doesn't mean that they're not going
to be in the movie, but to me, there has

(53:48):
to be at least some of that for it to
be a Karate Kid film, because the things that mark
a Karate Kid film for me is that you've got
a character who's kind of a fish out of water,
who is bullied, who turns to martial arts, partly to
protect himself, partly to find himself or herself. There was
a karate kid with a young woman in it as well,

(54:11):
so to find themselves and also make a connection with
their since their teacher, and that that's like the emotional
core of the film. But there also has to be
little moments of humor, and like there are plenty of
those in the in the first Karate Kid movie, for example.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Yeah, there are plenty of moments of humor in Cobra
Kai as well, which I'm wondering if this there's probably
answer is probably out there, but I don't remember at
the moment. If this movie is coming directly as a
sequel to.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Cobra Kai, right, is Cobra Kai considered canon in the
world of Karate Kid Legends, or is it like will
it be like Agent? Will it be like Agents of Shield?
And never acknowledged.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
My guess is that it's going to be canon, although
where they have left Cobra Kai still waiting on the
final episodes of the final season. But where they left
it who It's divisive.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
So we also got a trailer for the Electric State.
We had talked about a teaser for it earlier, or
maybe it was the first trailer, but we got a
slightly longer trailer that gave us a bit more background
about this world where ultimately robots, which were starting to

(55:25):
demand rights and things normally granted to human beings, are
corralled into a region in the United States and walled
off and there and that's the Electric State, that's their domain,
and that they are no longer allowed outside of that
humans are not supposed to go into it. And then

(55:46):
how that intersects with a young woman's quest to find
her long lost brother who may or may not still
be alive. This trailer, I thought the first trailer was
really visually stunning, interesting, kind of weird because some of
the robot designs are a little odd to me. They

(56:07):
come across like almost like nineteen forties cartoon character design
odd to me, But this one got me a little
more interested in seeing the movie. What was your reaction?

Speaker 1 (56:19):
I agree. I think focusing a little bit more on
the characters' motivations and backstory made it more intriguing. I
do wonder if the main character's long lost brother is
inside the robot that she teams up with. That's my
hot take from the trailer. Yeah, I will probably watch this.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Yeah, it looks it looks like it makes me think
of like a Spielbergian kind of film, right, Yeah, it
kind of has that sort of the thing that could
be schmaltzy if it were handled poorly, But it doesn't.
At least the trailers don't come across to me like
it was handled poorly. We won't really know until we
get to see the whole thing, but I'm encouraged by

(57:05):
the trailers, and it's nice to see something that's not
directly connected to tons of other franchises that are out there.
Although I do think this was an adaptation of a
graphic novel, so it's not like it's wholly original.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
I didn't know it was an adaptation of a graphic novel,
or if I did, I forgot, but it does look interesting. Yeah,
and I.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Could be wrong about the adaptation part. At this point.
Who knows my brain is a crazy wonderland filled with
thorns and broken down carnival rides, so.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Sometimes like the Electric State.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
So who is to say? I think Ariel's looking it
up right now.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Yes, it is based loosely based on the twenty eighteen
graphic novel of the same name. I just wasn't sure
if like the Russo brothers wrote it.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah, I don't know either. I just I seem to
remember that. So I'm glad. I'm glad the old gray
matter rattling round up in my nog and still gets
things right on occasion.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Look, that's the more you work it.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
So next up, we've got The Doctor Who twenty twenty
five season trailer. And I watched this despite the fact
that I don't follow Doctor Who, and I have to
say that I still have no idea what the heck
is going on in this trailer. Like, I watched it,
but I'm like, I don't know who any of these

(58:27):
people are. I don't know which ones are companions versus
just people he's interacting with. I will say there was
one shot of an enormous cartoon character climbing out of
a movie screen, and I thought that was really compelling.
But that's the only thing I can that's the only
takeaway I have.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Do you know who the doctor is?

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Yes? I know who the doctor is?

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Okay, so the sure right, Yeah, she'd got one. The
girl with the blonde bob with the older woman with
the blonde bob was his former companion m and then
the new companion was the one who's like, Doctor, You've
got to get me home. Although I also watched The
Doctor Who Christmas Special yesterday, not during Christmas, but yesterday,

(59:12):
and he had a temporary companion in that one kind
of not Nikola Coughlin, who also would have been a
great companion, but a different person than the doctor spent
a lot of time with that I would have adored
to be his new companion.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
It was.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
They had such a great on screen friendly chemistry that
I loved it. I also don't know what's gonna what's
going on on this. I maybe recognized one of the
villains they showed, but they didn't show much.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
That's true, it's a it's a fairly short teaser. But yeah,
but because I haven't, like I left off of the
Doctor back when I was in the Matt Smith series,
so I'm so far behind. I'm like a couple of
doctors plus a war doctor behind. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
I know, I owe you a list of what Doctor
Who episodes to watch and also which Supernatural episodes to watch,
But it's so like it's so some are like definitively good,
like The Doctor's Wife is definitively good, which I think
is the one with the tartist that Neil game In directed,
but I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Well, I'll definitely look out for that, because, like I
there have been episodes here and there of Doctor Who
that I liked, but on the whole, I found it
a series that, while I appreciated what it was doing,
I didn't connect with it so much. Yeah, and which
again is not a comment on the quality of the work.

(01:00:41):
It's just that me and my stage of life or whatever,
I just wasn't finding a hook there for me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
But some of the quality of the work is if he's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
I mean, especially in those earlier seasons like oh and
if you go to the original like earlier seasons, then absolutely.
That quality is ridiculous. Like even the quality of the sound,
like it's just such that tiny, canny sound from where
they're clearly just using like boom mics in the studio
and you're not getting very good sound at all. Those

(01:01:14):
are hard to watch, but yeah, I just I don't know.
It's one of those things. It's just one of those
properties I never really got into, but I can't appreciate
the work that goes into them. And this trailer, like
it's really well put together, even though it doesn't necessarily
show its hand too much, it just shows that the

(01:01:34):
show itself is fairly slick.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it's maybe accited. I need
to know who that giant cartoon character is. Yeah. Last
of the things that we missed due to the holidays
is the second trailer for the second season of The
Last of Us.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Yeah, which is going to be I think it's essentially
the Last of Us two, but it's split. That story
is going to be split into two seasons, so part one, Yeah, yeah,
this is yeah, this is the Last of Us season two,
which is Last of Us two, Part one, carry the three,
but yeah, it's it's a it'll be the first half

(01:02:13):
of the second game of Last of Us, and based
upon the trailer, I think I know what the cliffhanger
for this season is going to be. And I don't
want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't played the
game or hasn't read how the second game plays out
or whatever. I'm just prepare yourselves for being upset.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, I will say this, Like the
first trailer for season two looked tense. Yes, second trailer
makes it look way scarier.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Yeah. Yeah, There's some shots like there's one shot of
I couldn't even tell if it was Ellie, it was
someone hiding behind a tree while a bunch of people
were looking for them that looked really tense. There was
like shots of just armies of infected rushing toward like
a a walled city, stuff like that. Yeah, it looks

(01:03:11):
it looks like they've really upped the ante for season two,
and I'm sure that they you know, they earned that
with the accolades and the success that season one brought.
Like season one was really good TV. I mean, including
an episode that I still think is probably one of
the best episodes of any television I've ever seen. So yeah,

(01:03:34):
and yeah, and I know Ariel you really liked it too,
with the exception of the What's Eating You episode where
you had to kind of dip out for bits.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Of that, Yeah, for sure. But the episode that you
said might be one of the best episodes of TV,
it was so good. Yeah, I was sad for like
a week, but it was so good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
I've I've rewatched it. Every time you watch it, it
rex me, like, I know what's going to happen. It's
still rex me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
I try. I tried to watch it disconnected because I knew,
but it didn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Yeah. Well, it's tribute to the showrunners as well as
the actors, like everything came together in that storytelling to
make it really impactful. I mean, and it's you know,
we're dancing around it just in case people haven't seen it,
because it's worth watching. But it's one of those things
where you kind of marvel at the fact that the

(01:04:25):
creators were able to introduce characters in an episode and
have you care so much about them and they're only
in that one episode, Like it's not like these are
characters that you've been following the whole time. You're meeting
them for the first time and you care about them
and that's hard to do.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Yeah. Yeah, I hope more people figure out how to
do it, because that's quality entertainment there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Yeah, it's fantastic storytelling. So I'm sure Season two will
also be an emotional gut punch, and you know, I
look forward to I'm going to try to do I'm
going to try and watch it, but this might be
one that I I don't know if I'll be able

(01:05:11):
to stick with it. Like I appreciate what Last of
Us Too was doing from a story perspective, I understand
what the whole point was, but I don't know. If
I can watch.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
It, we'll see I know a lot of the big
spoilers and Last of Us Too, but I don't know
what the whole point was because I haven't played it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Yeah, and I'm not going to spoil it. So let's
move on. Let's move on and talk about some new
stuff that is fresh from this week, because everything we
talked about so far was stuff that kind of came
out over the previous weeks. First up, we got a
brand new trailer for your friendly neighborhood Spider Man, which
I originally had a typo in our lineup, and it

(01:05:52):
was your friendly neighborhood cider man, and I could go
for that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Yeah. Yeah, If I had a neighborhood man who brought
me like hot cider, I would be I would before that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yeah, yeah, me too. As long as as a lot
of the neighborhoods sider Man didn't look like the you know,
the hag from Snow White, I'd probably just take it
for granted that he's trustworthy and I should just drink
that stuff down once is cool enough, you don't want
to burn your mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
We've both talked about how much we like applesider.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
We love applesider. Yes, it's my favorite fall drink.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Actually, yes, this trailer looks delightful.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Yeah, it looks great. It's interesting because it it's a
reimagining of Peter Parker's early years as Spider Man, when
and in this version, he's got an association with He's
essentially got Norman Osborne as his mentor instead of Tony Stark.

(01:06:50):
So and Norman Osbourne is the guy turns into the
Green Goblin eventually. So it's an interesting twist on Spider Man,
where what if Spider Man's mentor was someone who didn't
necessarily have his best interests at heart. What I was
going to say was that another interesting little thing about
it is that at one point, the intent was for

(01:07:15):
this series to be essentially part of the MCU, that
it was going to dovetail and be like the Tom
Holland version of Spider Man, but before we see him
in the first Spider Man film, or indeed before we
see Tony Stark visit him. But they decided that that

(01:07:37):
was too restrictive, that it would mean having to make
too many concessions for it to fit within the MCU,
which I totally understand because Agents of Shield is another
great example of that, right. Agents of Shield is not
really cannon in the MCU because it contradicts certain things
that the MCU considers cannon. So it gives you a

(01:08:01):
lot more freedom in your storytelling. So that's a good thing,
I think, And I think it's a lot easier to
get away with too, because it's an animated series.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
The most recent Spider Man that I watched, where Happy
was kind of like his handler but he was in
high school, was delightful, and I look forward to this
one too. I'm glad that it's not canon because, yeah,
although with the multiverse who's to say what canon is
it and is it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
That's a great point. Yeah, you could just argue this
is a multiverse variant of Spider Man and that would
be enough, right. Yeah, I mean we've already got that too,
like we've had variant Spider Man's. So we also got
a trailer for a interesting science fiction slash what is
it to be Sentient? Can can artificial beings be? Like?

(01:08:55):
Can they discover humanity? As in the quality of humanity?
In a movie called Love Me?

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Yeah, I saw this and was going to share it
with you and then noticed you had put it onto
the lineup, so beat me to it. It It feels
like Wally but for adults.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
It reminded me a little bit of Her, which is
the film where a man falls in love with his
operating system, which is voiced by wants their Face who
played Scarlett Johansson Johnson. Yeah. So, but this is this
is a movie where you have like a an artificially
intelligent booie and an artificially intelligent satellite that end up

(01:09:40):
connecting with one another and then they kind of create.
First first it was like they create digital human forms
so that they can interact together in like a virtual
world and then somehow, whether it actually happens or this
is just the film depicting what happens in a different way.
They take atual human forms and they're trying to kind

(01:10:03):
of discover things like love and you know, these deep,
deep concepts and explore what that really means. And I
think science fiction is really good for that kind of thing.
And I'm curious about this. I don't know if I
think it works or not yet.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Yeah, I don't know. So all of humanity has died off, yes,
so they're just they're basing everything off of like videos
and historical data, and so it already feels like sad
to me. Yeah, because these are like the two last

(01:10:46):
ais as far as we know anywhere, and there's no
one to help them fix them, Like a booy can't
fix itself.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Well, I don't mean to burst your bubble, Aeriel, but
if you go in to a relationship thinking you can
fix somebody, then maybe you're getting into it for.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
The wrong reason itself.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
I know I'm saying that. If you're hoping that the
satellite's gonna fix the booy, like, that's just that's a
toxic relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
No. What I'm saying, is the Mooe's going to break
down and not be able to replace the panels that
are laying in water that are going to eventually rust.
I feel like to die.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
That's a great analogy for me, honestly, Like I'm going
to break down and ain't nobody going to fix my
rusty panels? Yeah, I understand what you're saying from a
practical point of view. I think also like it's it's
interesting in that it's kind of exploring the concept of
what could humanity's legacy be that even after humanity itself

(01:11:46):
has passed, like maybe our time is over, Like you
got to keep in your mind, we've only been on
Earth for a very short amount of time in the
grand scheme of things, like a blink of an eye,
like you know, especially if you think of humans as
people who are able to record history in a meaningful way,

(01:12:08):
that's a very short amount of time. And it feels
like it's forever because our live spans are pretty short
and so many generations have come before us, but we
are not eternal. So asking like, well, what do we
leave behind that could potentially go outlive us? I think
that's an interesting question. I mean It's one that just

(01:12:30):
as individuals, we often ask ourselves, like, what sort of
legacy am I leaving behind? Am I even creating a legacy?
Is that important to me? If it is, how can
I make sure it's the best one I can do?
And I mean those are big questions.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Those are big and important questions. And this movie is
going to give me extistential dread.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Yeah, ex extra existential dread.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Yeah. I do like that they have a long distance relationship,
so one of them is a satellite, and I love
that it's a relationship. So the other is a boo.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
Nice Yeah, you're my boo.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
We we you're my boo.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
We also got a new trailer. This is like we've
seen so many of these. I almost didn't put this
on our list just because we have talked about Captain
America Brave New World a few times. Because we've gotten
a few trailers. This one seems to focus a little
bit more on Thunderbolt Ross Slash Red Hulk, and uh, honestly,

(01:13:35):
it's the least interesting part of Captain America for me, Like,
I'm interested in all the other stuff more than the
Red Hulk part.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
Samesia's Yeah, this trailer didn't grab me other than to
remind me that the movie comes out in February.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Valentine's Day.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Yeah, Oh, happy Valentine's Day. Watch a war movie.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
Now, you go to Valentine's Day and you see a
big Red Hulk and then you just hold up a
cutout of a heart and hold it up against the Hulk,
and there you got your Valentine.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
And then his heart grows ten sizes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
That day you Hulk smashed my heart.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
I mean, I like it, but Green Hulk not Red Hulk.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Yeah, I mean, I have hopes that it'll be really
I'm hoping it's going to be similar to Captain America
Winter Soldier, which is what a lot of people have
been comparing it to in press junkets and stuff. I
still think that's one of the best Marvel films that's

(01:14:40):
been made. It may, you know, very well, be my favorite.
Like I really have to think about to figure out
what my favorite Marvel film is, but it's way up there.
So if it does, in fact kind of match the
tone and energy of that film, then I'll probably really
like it. But if it does end up being more
or about Red Hulk than anything else, then I'm I'm

(01:15:05):
not as excited, partly because it's the issue I have
with all the Marvel films where the third act turns
into a giant video game battle extravaganza. If you have
characters like Hulk involved that it it definitely feels more
like a video game because you're hyper aware that what

(01:15:25):
you're seeing is computer generated. Like even if they made
it look really good, like with great skin textures and
shadows and lighting and all that stuff, it's still clearly
computer generated and it doesn't feel like there's a real
thing there. I also worry about the Thing and Fantastic
Four being like that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
But we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. I uh oh,
so many things I want to tell you, but I
can't until you watch What If? Okay, Anyhow, Natasha Leone
is playing a surprise character in Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
Yeah, yeah, we talked about there. Yeah yeah, Ben, do
you know who it is? Now? Is that something that
was revealed and What If?

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
I don't think I do, because it would be really
weird for her to. She does voice a character in
What If? Yeah, and it would be really weird for
that character.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Is that the original character that was added for What If?

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I remember hearing that there was an
original character added for what if there was.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
An original charactered character added last season? Who is the
indigenous superhero? This is another one that's added for just
the last two episodes kind of, and it's fun. It's
a fun character. It's really interesting. I don't know if
you're going to love or hate them, but it would
be really weird for that character show up and fantastic

(01:16:49):
for yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Yeah, and like inventing new characters to insert into the
Marvel universe. I mean, arguably, you could say Disney has
a motivation to try and do that more because it
would allow them to incorporate those characters directly into their parks,
whereas when it comes to existing Marvel comic book characters,

(01:17:11):
they don't have access to some of those because the
Universal has a pre existing agreement at least, yeah, at
least in the East Coast. Yeah. So anyway, that's that's
getting so inside Baseball, let's move on. Yeah, and instead
of talking about inside Baseball, let's talk about inside Wrastler.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
I was gonna say inside the Ring. Yeah, there was
a movie. There's a movie coming out called Queen of
the Ring. Yeah, is it kind of focuses on the story.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Of Mildred Burke.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
Mildred Burke, is she the first like famous female wrestler.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
Well, I'll put to you this way. I am a
fan of wrestling. I'm even a fan of wrestling history.
But I was unfamiliar with Mildred Burke because most of
my history knowledge only goes back as far as as
really the nineteen seventies and a little bit into the sixties.
So the folks who were active in the early early

(01:18:08):
days of professional wrestling in like the twenties, thirties, forties,
I don't know much about them at all. So I
had not heard of Mildred Burke before you sent me
this trailer.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Yeah, anyhow early like nineteen thirties female wrestler, female who
wants to become a wrestler. It looks fun and good.
It kind of talked about how wrestling was popular in
like the carnival circuit. It looks uplifting.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
Yeah. I liked the tone. I liked the message it
seemed to be giving, and I liked the fact that
it was exploring the carnival roots of professional wrestling. Like
pro wrestling has its own vocabulary and much of that
vocabulary is rooted in carne, Like the old Carnie speaks stuff,

(01:19:04):
so things like a mark or you know, doing the job.
That kind of stuff kind of dates all the way
back to the carnival days and still is used today
and for those who don't know, like pro wrestling kind
of got started as grapplers who would do a thing
where they would take on all comers at like carnivals,

(01:19:26):
and they would actually wrestle locals. But if a local
look like they could potentially beat the wrestler, which would
be bad business for the carnival, then frequently what would
happen is you would have a little discussion with this
local and pay them off so that they would lose

(01:19:46):
to the wrestler. And that eventually developed into well, let's
stop bringing third parties in who we have no control
over and instead match like minded rest against each other
where we've pre arranged who's going to win and who's
going to lose, and make it safer for everybody. And

(01:20:07):
this seems to explore that evolution in the film.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
Yeah, yeah, so a very far cry from Glow.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
But honestly, it makes me think of the film The Wrestler, Like, yeah,
that's a great movie. It's very sad, so I don't
recommend it for people who are in a rough headspace,
but it's a fantastic film.

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
It featured the main character, Mildred Burke, is played by
Emily Bette Rickards, who was Felicity in like Arrow and
the Flash and all of that, And I will say
I did not recognize her at all at all, Like
I had to, I had to look up who she
was in Arrow and the Flash, despite the fact that

(01:20:56):
she was one of my favorite characters in those series,
because she looks so different with her care you know,
being a bit older. Now. The other thing I really
liked about this movie is like it didn't feel too
much like it was for the male gaze.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Yeah, no, it doesn't feel like it's that kind of
exploitative approach, which is Listen, I could talk for hours
about pro wrestling and the role of women in pro wrestling,
and like how in really the eighties, but really the
nineties and into the early two thousand's, the role that

(01:21:35):
women played was largely eye candy, and like it was
kind of it was disgusting, honestly, Like there was a
time at least in professional wrestling here in the United States,
where if you were a woman in the wrestling business,
chances are you were playing either a valet or a manager.
You weren't wrestling, and you were wearing as little clothing

(01:21:56):
as possible, And if you were in a wrestling match,
it would be so demeaning, like a broad and panties match,
where your you know, your goal is to rip the
costume off your opponent so that they're stripped down to
their underwear. Like those were the kind of things that
were going on in the eighties and nineties. I'm happy
to say that these days that's not really what you
see anymore. Now you see women competing and sometimes, like legit,

(01:22:20):
they end up holding the top spot on the card
because the matches they put together are just as good,
if not better, than the stuff the men are doing.
And you know, it's women like Mildred who even made
that a possibility.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
Yeah, yeah, I had a friend's parent tell me once
that if acting didn't work out, I should become a wrestler.
I don't. I like stage combat. I don't fully disagree,
you know, despite the fact that my back is out now.
This movie also has quite a geeky cast in it.
It's got Walton Goggins in it. Yep, you see in

(01:22:58):
the trailers, and wall in it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
Oh wow. Yeah, she was in Daredevil.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
And she's also a D and D professional dungeon master.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Yeah. I didn't see her in the trailer, but I
could have just overlooked her. It's also got Martin cove
Martin Kovee in it, who was Crease in Karate Kid. Okay,
so and and I guess also Cobra Kai and a
bunch of other great actors. But those are the geekiest
ones that are standing out to me. I am really
looking forward to this movie. This This feels more slice

(01:23:31):
of life than a lot of movies that do super well.
But I hope it does super well.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Yeah. I want to see this one too. I I
gotta say, I'm more interested in this than I was
in The Claw, the Iron Claw movie where it was
about the von Erics, because I already know I know
about the von Eric family, I know how tragic that
story is, and I wasn't ready to watch a family disintegrate,
you know, member my by member in the most tragic way.

(01:23:59):
So I'm glad to see something that looks to me
to have a more positive kind of take. Also, the
wrestling business, let's be honest, is a rough one. Like
even if you're doing well in it, you're probably going
to be dealing with a lot of long term pain
and injury issues, I mean, if you're really active in

(01:24:21):
it at any rate. So wrestling is one of those
things that's a complicated thing for me to be a
fan of because on the one hand, I'm a huge
like I admire the athleticism and the skill needed to
put on a good match, both from a physical level
and just like a psychological approach where how do you
play to the crowd so that the crowd excitement builds

(01:24:41):
and then kind of pull it back and build it
again like that that's an art form. But on the
flip side, like knowing how many people suffer really bad
injuries and then often that leads to things like reliance
on pain medication, that sort of stuff that makes it
really complicated too, because obviously you want people to have healthy,

(01:25:02):
long productive lives, and for a lot of wrestlers that's
just not a possibility. But this looks like a positive
film in that genre for sure for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
And last I guess this is a slightly sad.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Note to end on, well, I mean it's a discussion.
Note is really what it is. I mean, I found
a story in Variety about the US box office take
for twenty twenty four and how it declined slightly from
twenty twenty three, and it's the first time since post

(01:25:39):
pandemic that the numbers actually went down. They had been
going up year over year. They still weren't as high
as pre pandemic numbers, nowhere close, but they were building.
Twenty twenty four we actually saw a dip. But the
article also offers a hypothesis as to why that may
have happened. In part, it is that we had the

(01:26:01):
strikes last year and that that impacted films being finished
and released, so there were some dead spots in the year.
The other thing I found interesting was that there was
the revelation this I do find sad, but the revelation
that out of the top ten grossing films in the

(01:26:23):
United States, nine of them were sequels.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Yeah, that is very sad to me. Also, though a
lot of the top grossing films were family films, Yeah,
which is super interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:26:34):
That is interesting. Yeah, it does show that, like families
are more often going to the movie theater than potentially
other types of film fans. Right, Like you know, in
the old days, it may be that an R rated
movie was the one that was getting the most traction.
That's not necessarily the case or PG thirteen often because

(01:26:56):
movie studios would be scared if they made it all,
then their target audience wouldn't even be allowed into the theater.
But yeah, yeah, it was interesting to see that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Sadly, I think we're going to hit something similar in
twenty twenty five. I hope not. So every year since
the pandemic, it's been next year will be good. We've
gotten past this thing, and next year will be good.
And it was a pandemic, and then it was the
writer strike and then the actor strike, and then the
voice actor strike and also several crew strike yeah yazi, yeah, yazi.

(01:27:32):
And so there's been that mixed with the struggle that
streaming has been having because at first, all of these
streaming networks are putting all these all of this money
into shows because they were like the new golden thing,
and that's great, but a lot of streaming networks have

(01:27:54):
been losing money because it's too expensive to have every
streaming channel, and so the market gets saturated pretty quickly. Yeah, so, uh,
things have also been down because of that, because there
have been less streaming network shows being made partially because
of the strike. Now that the strikes are over, it's

(01:28:17):
still been a little quiet. The guess is that, you know,
it's just people don't want to start things up before
the holidays just to shut them down for the holidays.
So I think everybody in the industry is really hoping
that it'll pick up now that we're in the new
year and people kind of know what they're in for,
but uh, that is yet to be seen. Yeah, we

(01:28:38):
have we have a we have a mutual acquaintance who
likes to posit on there. He's he's in he's in
the film industry, and he likes to posit on on
on like he likes to make predictions for the year.
And he thinks that horror movies are going to be
very popular because they are less expensive to make, because
you can make a really good horror movie on the
lower budget. Though I would I would wager to say

(01:29:00):
you can also make a really good sci fi fantasy
movie with the right crew on a low budget. Look
at District Nine, look at Godzilla Minus one, those were
both made with fairly small budgets.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Yeah, as long as your budget is going to the
right stuff in your movie.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
Yeah, you know. So hopefully this actually opens up room
for a lot more indie movies to take the stage,
because big budget movies are fun, but you don't necessarily
need a big budget movie to make a good movie.
If you look at like, I guess, like Goodwill Hunting

(01:29:37):
or Dead Poet Society. I don't think those were super
high budget movies per se. I don't know, but I
would assume that Slice of life movies cost a lot
less to make.

Speaker 2 (01:29:46):
Yeah, well I know that. I know the Goodwill Hunting
didn't cost a huge amount to make because Ben Affleck
and Matt Damon didn't have enough money to like, you know,
they were like, yeah, we were having to squeeze every
penny to get this thing made.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
But it's considered a really great movie to this day.
So it'll be it'll be interesting to see how stuff changes,
how the market changes. You'll probably see a lot more
family movies are Our friend who's making these predictions thinks
it's because theme parks have gotten too expensive for families
to go to, but a movie is not so that's

(01:30:21):
like your family outing. I don't know if that's true. Yeah,
I mean it's an interesting thought.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
I know. Historically horror movies tend to do well because
they're one of those movies that people still like to
see in groups. And they also, like you say, horror movies,
they tend to have lower budgets, like every now and
then you get a big budget version of a horror movie.

(01:30:47):
But the appeal for studios for horror movies is that
it tends to be a smaller investment for potentially larger
payoff that even if it even if it doesn't do
incredibly well, if it didn't cost that much, then you're
probably at least going to break even if not make
a small profit. So I agree that horror movies are
going to be like a go to genre for a

(01:31:10):
lot of the industry. And also it's one of those
movies that still convinces people to go to the theater,
like there's lots of other movies that just can't, like
you know, you'll release them, but people just don't go.
Now saying that, you look at the list of the
ones from twenty twenty four, like you said, the family movies,

(01:31:31):
they did great. You know, like Inside Out Too did fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
I didn't expect it to. I know it was predicted to,
but I didn't expect it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
Yeah, it was weird, right. I think it showed that
there was a need for family oriented entertainment and it
filled that need because, like you, I saw the previews
for it, and I thought, well, it doesn't look bad,
but it doesn't strike me as a film, a Pixar
film that I absolutely have to see. In fact, I

(01:32:01):
still have not yet seen it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
So I wonder if part of the trend toward these big,
flashy movies is that people that people's attention spans have
gotten shorter, and therefore, if it's not big and flashy
and ooh look at this, ooh look at that, it's
going to it's going to lose half of its audience's interest.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
It's possible. But I mean, there are some movies that
have done pretty well over the last I mean, let's
call it a decade, you know, the last decade or so,
that have kind of embraced the slower pacing that you
would have find in like movies from the seventies and
early eighties. Some of those movies have done quite well,

(01:32:40):
like not all of them, and some of them have
done quite well from a critical perspective, but not necessarily
box office perspective. But I think there's still a place
for it. I'm trying not to paint with too broad
a brush of saying today's audiences just don't have the
attention span to sit through like a slow moving or

(01:33:02):
deliberately paced film.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
I mean I think they can. They sat through Wicked.
That movie is long.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Yeah, it turns out like if you throw in some
songs and dance numbers, then people might stick around.

Speaker 1 (01:33:13):
Like that's the answer. Make everything a musical.

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
I thought it was pretty weird when Nosferatu started dancing.
I gotta admit it was a weird moment.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
So interesting. Have you listened to any I know we're
getting along. Have you listened to any of the interviews
with Bill Skarsgard on developing his character.

Speaker 2 (01:33:31):
I didn't. I did learn what happened to his prosthetic
thing of a jig. Oh, he has a prosthetic thing
of a jig because there's a full front viewing of
count Orlock and he gifted it to Nicholas Holt, who
has it hang in a frame in his house.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
That seems accurate. I like, I thank goodness because I
do know that that scene he was surrounded by a
bunch of creepy crawleys and I would prefer to be
covered in prosta for that, but uh no to get
because he doesn't have a very deep voice, so to
get like the deep Warlock voice. He worked with an
Italian singer. Oh wow, yeah, I wonder.

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
I wonder if he actually did damage to his vocal
cords that way. Sometimes that can happen. He also he
rolls his r's like every R is rolled that Orlock speaks,
and like there are moments depending on what words he's
saying that. I'm like, it's starting to sound like he's
part of a motorcycle club because you're getting so many

(01:34:33):
other ers like, but it's a rolled art. I can't
roll my rs, so I'm not going to do it.
But he would do these these very intense rolled rs.
He was great. I thought he was great in the film.
I thought everyone did pretty well.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
He worked really, really hard. I know that looking so
different from himself was a struggle to like get into
the character and making sure that he could act through
the prosthetics. I know he had a very intensive like
warm up process to make sure that he wasn't tight
so he could talk like that. So I think he
took it very seriously. Yeah, listening to him for his
process for this movie, Like when you talk about all

(01:35:14):
the creepy stuff, he's even too, I'm like, oh, that's creepy.
But when he talks about like how he did the
craft of becoming this character, it is so interesting and
it's it's so respectable.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
I'll have to check that out because like, that does
sound fascinating to me, and it sounds like the kind
of work I can I can get behind, as opposed
to your typical stories about like method actors. We've talked
about this before. Yeah, you know about how method actors
typically are looking for an excuse to be an abusive
jerk because it's method acting, and so they get to
be an abusive jerk to everybody who's working on the project.

(01:35:47):
And you don't often hear about method actors like embracing
a nice character and just being super nice to everybody.
It only seems to go the other way. So it's
great to hear stories of this is how I'm approaching
the actual technical aspect of taking on this character, so
that I can deliver what the director expects. Yeah, I

(01:36:09):
like that a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
It's super interesting. I'll try to find some of the
videos outside of the Tiki talks. I'm sure they are
like on Instagram and YouTube and that as well.

Speaker 2 (01:36:18):
Probably, Yeah, there's always these press tours. I'll also say
Willem Dafoe's great great in Nosparatu. Loved Willem Dafoe's performance. Also,
it's just a kick to say Willem Dafoe playing I mean,
he's very much in some ways like Anthony Hopkins in
Bram Stoker's Dracula, and they're both playing the van Helsing character.
It's got a different name in Nosparato, but it's the

(01:36:40):
same thing. It's the Van Helsing guy. And I just
think it's hilarious because Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the
Vampire played the part of Max Shrek, the actor who
played Nosparatu in the silent film nineteen thirties version. And
I was just like, how delicious that you know, years
later he's back, but not playing the vampire, He's playing

(01:37:04):
the vampire hunter.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
Yeah. I also know one other tidbit that I will
tell you off off Mike that you probably already know,
but it's maybe a spoiler and also a little gross.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
Okay, but that's all we have.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
If you've stuck through all of are crazy of this
long first episode of the year. Thank you, We appreciate you, Jonathan.
If they want to reach out to us or me
or you or whatever, If they want to reach out
to us, how do they do that?

Speaker 2 (01:37:34):
All? Right? So you're going to have to go on
a road trip with Paul Rudd, which I know is
already going to make things a little tricky for you.
You're going to be driving with Paul Rudd through the
highlands of Scotland, and sure enough, don't you know it,
just as you're getting deep into conversation you're not really
paying attention, you realize that you've just run over the
Locknest Monster and you're going to get out of your

(01:37:56):
car and you're going to go back and look and
see that the Locknest Monster appears to be dead in
the street. So, thinking you can't just leave it there,
you both you and Paul Rudd have to drag the
corpse of the Locknest Monster on top of your tiny
little car and strap it down with whatever twine or
rope you happen to have in there and then try
and drive your way to the closest town, and about

(01:38:19):
a mile and a half down the road, you're going
to realize the lock Best Monster wasn't dead at all.
It was just dazed and now it's just flopping around
on the top of your car. So you're going to
have to deal with that. That's going to be the
rest of your day, Let's be honest, it's really going
to take up the rest of your day. You're going
to take care of that and get an Essie back
into the water. Everyone thinks it's okay and everything. The

(01:38:42):
trouble is that the next morning you're going to have
to spend that on the phone with the car rental
agency and they're just not going to accept the fact
that a Locknest Monster collision is actually covered. Then the
basic insurance plan that you opted into when you first
rented the car earlier that week going to be the
next half of your day. When you're done with that,

(01:39:03):
you're gonna go to eat at the closest place you
can find, which is kind of be a Nandos, And
while you're there, you're gonna notice that I'm actually already
ahead of you in line getting the extra spicy butterfly
chicken breast and the macho ps. And that's when you
can ask me your question.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
And if you can't do spicy food like me, or
your car is way too small for anessy, it would
just crumble under it. You can reach out to us
on social media on Facebook and Instagram and threads. We
are a Larger Drunk Collider. That's also our handle on Discord.
You can get an invite to Discord on our website
that's www dot Largener Drunk Collider dot com. And if

(01:39:42):
you want to reach us old school or send us
a long message, you can reach out to us via email.
It is largener drum podt gmail dot com. Thank you
for starting the new year with us in all of
its geekiness. And yeah, that's it until next time. I

(01:40:04):
am Ariel here, but not all their casting.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
And I am Jonathan. If you have prosthetics that you
want to send me so I can hang them on
my wall, talk to me after the show.

Speaker 1 (01:40:14):
Strickland, a lot of people are going to be eating Nanto's.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
I bet The Large nerdron Collider was created by Ariel
Casting and produced, edited, published, deleted, Undeleted, Published again. Cursed
At by Jonathan Strickland, Music by Kevin McLeod of incomptech
dot Com